After much, much, much speculation, Microsoft let the cat out of the bag today: due to weak results, Microsoft is going to cut 5000 jobs. Those 5000 jobs will disappear over the course of 18 months, with 1400 jobs being cut immediately. Quarterly results, as well as the cost-cutting measures, were made known in a press release today.

All right, I didn't even check. Only $20 billion? Oh My God! We should send donations to those poor share holders... Please, someone give them another $10 or $20 billions to survive! Times are really tough for them!

half of that would be a very good salary for 5000 workers for 40 full years and they would still have a lot remaining. Let me repeat that slowly: They could pay 40 full years (very good pay) with half the money they have in the bank and they would still get their full revenues as profits. They still get over $10 billion a year of profits. They wouldn't even have to cancel their plan to buy a new jet plane and they still save a lot of billions in the bank. Even with a lot of creativity they could probably not spend all the money they would have, even if they kept the 5000 employees. They don't have the time to spend all their money, despite doing that all day. They could hire 5000 more people and they would still have more money than they can spend.
Remember most of these people do nothing productive at all. They have a lot of money and spend it all day buying jets and ferraris. Tell me more about slackers please.

On the other hand, the 5000 people they fired spend their money in shops. They work, they spend. This is how the economy works. Even the worst slacker in the company do more than most share holders and probably spend much less.

No worker, no people in shops, no economy. Only parasites with jets and ferraris. Continue that way and one of these days, no one will be manufacturing even your ferraris anymore.